Sunstone Volumes 1-5

The Long And Binding Road

Sunstone
Print Collections 1-5
Written and illustrated by Stjepan Šejić
Top Cow Publishing

I’ve only recently gotten into digital comics and they’re not really my best choice of reading materials when I much prefer the printed page to all this electronic gubbins. But price and scarcity trump that kinda consideration in the digital realm, I guess. That being said, I’ve noticed lately that the .cbr and .cbz files which can be downloaded from the internet (often for free, it seems to me) are nothing like, say, watching a comic or cartoon off of a DVD or Blu Ray, which tend to get a little pixilated, quite often. This file format is pretty good, when synced up to an iPad (or nearest equivalent tablet) at giving you something which is 100% the same, almost, as holding a comic in your hands... if not actually approximating the scent of a good old comic or giving you that feeling of paper rubbing against the fingers which is almost as much about the reading experience as anything else.

I do know comics a little, though. When I was either three or four, I started reading with comics such as Superman, Batman, Spider-Man and SHAZAM! (the original Captain Marvel) and it certainly a format that teaches you to read fast, I can tell you that. I was reading a lot of comics for the first 16 years of my life and then, back in July 1984, I read the serialised version of what was and still is, to me, the greatest single literary experience of my life. I never thought I’d say that about a comic but it’s true... within the pages of 2000AD, which I’d been buying and saving since its first issue, Alan Moore’s three book epic, The Ballad Of Halo Jones, first hit my brain and has never left it. Even with great works like the same writer’s Watchmen or Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns or Moore’s The Killing Joke... The Ballad Of Halo Jones has never been surpassed and it’s the standard I measure all comics against. It’s always been the greatest comic ever written and drawn and that’s still the case.

Sunstone is, therefore, not the greatest comic ever written and illustrated. At least to me. However... it is easily the second greatest comic ever written and I say that having read some really great masterpieces in my time. This comic is just about perfect... so it obviously makes it difficult to review, for sure.

Now, I think I may have heard of Sunstone before, a couple of years ago... or I may not have. It rang a bell but when I found a stash of the first six volumes of this book online I gave it a go and... well. What’s that you say.... there are six of these (so far) but you are only going to be talking about the first five here? Well, yes. That’s because... and much to my surprise because I wasn’t done with the main characters yet... the first main arc of the book comes to a close at the end of the fifth volume and it seemed, with only the sixth volume starting the next arc actually out there so far, a natural place to break from what has been an intense binge session of a great work of art.

Sunstone tells the story of Lisa and Allison, two bisexual turned lesbian characters who have an intense BDSM relationship which turns very quickly into an intense love affair... which neither of them wants to admit for fear of the other one rejecting that their friendship and sexual role play (Alli is the domme and Lisa is the submissive) is anything more than that. Now the book is told from the point of view of Lisa, who is a writer, telling her story and, also, the story of many of the friends they make on their journey. It tells of how they met, how they both grew up and how their appreciation of the BDSM scene came about and, also, how everything jelled for their friends too. In fact, the nice thing about this book is that it jumps off on a tangent and the various other characters become as much people to care and worry about as the two main protagonists.

It also explains, to some extent, some of the different guises and forms from the world of BDSM which, I have to say, would probably be fairly educational to some people. I’ve been interested in and participating in certain aspects of that in my life in different guises and levels for a while now so I'm fairly experience in a wide range of stuff but, I’m happy to say, the writer is pushing ‘safety’ and ‘limits’... and the extension of those limits... to the forefront of the occasional sexually charged scenes within the story (of around 600 pages of story divided between the first five volumes). Heck, even the title of the strip is the safeword Alli gives to her subs and lovers when she is playing with them. As the pages go on a newbie to the scene can learn about stuff like harnesses, rigging, S&M play and also, on occasion, some of the risks involved... such as the consequences of someone stupidly cutting off the blood circulation with ropes applied incorrectly or a nice throwaway comment about the use of gags and how you play with them when a sub isn’t able to utter a safeword.

There’s also a lot of humour in the pages and, absolutely, a lack of casting judgement on the practices on display here from the writer... not always from some of the characters but, hey, that’s how you create the drama and provide the path to enlightenment. For instance, on the humour front... and its hard to recreate this without showing the panels but... let me just put it in script form...

Lisa narrating: We had to employ advanced tactics to persuade her...”

Person A: Come on!
Person B: No!
Person C: Come oon!
Person B: No!
Person A: Come ooooon!
Person B: “No!”
Person C: “Come ooooon!”
Person B: “Fine.”

Or in another scene where Alli has worn out Lisa’s now sore tongue by having her bound body going down on her for an incredibly long session so all her ‘s’ sounds become ‘sh’... and when Alli’s best friend Alan shows up just after and calls them on it... “Of course you don’t. Lisa merely developed a mean case of Connery by diving for pearls.” This book is really, very funny and, quite smart while also having tonnes of nerdy references to stuff like Star Trek, Doctor Who and even a ‘Dildo’ Baggins joke (at one point Lisa likens Comic Conventions to Fetish Conventions and, yeah, with what Comic Conventions have become over the years, I totally see that).

And the art is gorgeous too. Painted stuff which constantly walks a thin line between exquisitely detailed realism and cartoony expressionism, which shouldn’t quite work this well when combined but it really does. Also, the way the panels are designed in the comic are amazing. There’s a lot of stuff where you see simultaneous things happening, where the action of two individual characters and situations are crosscut visually on the same page, for instance. But, the artist manages to pull off this kind of stuff which does, in some pages and spreads, include some elabourate designs, without throwing up any impediment to the way the eyes decode the flow of the material on the page... which is a difficult thing to get right and, believe me, I’ve seen in a lot of published stuff where this can sometimes go wrong and your eye is left not knowing which part of the page to read next. This didn’t happen to me once within the first five volumes and... well, what can I say? This guy nailed it. And bearing in mind how tangential and sometimes devilishly metatextual some of the content in this book is, that’s really no mean feat.

 I haven’t quite figured out how he’s able to write female characters so well yet but, it all seems pretty authentic to me and he does manage to explore a few different ‘character voices’ over the arc and none of them seem out of place or too overly like anyone else when they are talking or thinking. And this, I’m sure, is one of the things that makes this book so addictive. I seriously didn’t want to put it down and that’s why I’ve had to stop for a while now that Lisa and Alli are no longer going to be part of the next arc. I mean, yeah, I’m sure they’ll feature heavily in it, actually but, this is the majority of their story done I think (although there are some important bits hinted at that we’ll obviously see from a different perspective when the time comes, I am guessing). The book takes the form of a flashback to real events from Lisa, Alli and their friends’ life in the past but, occasionally, the past will be interrupted by a little intrusion from ‘the present’ where Lisa is writing from and, obviously, things are still moving towards where they are at in their lives now.

I am, of course, referring to these characters as real people because, very quickly (like from the first couple of pages) they became just that for me... and I’m telling you now it’s rare for me to get this attached to fictional characters, for sure. Presumably because the writer has a very good ear and there is a strong sense of 'the truth of things' coming across in the writing all the way through. This is just plain good writing. Period.

So, yeah, as you can probably tell, this comic totally had me hooked and I feel like I need to come down a little to exorcise the addictive hold it has on me... which is, of course, where me writing a review of it comes in. If you write about something then maybe it stops holding power over you, right? At the moment I’m not sure whether to go onto Book Six or wait until the next couple of volumes come out before getting back to it. Either way though, I’m guessing you can tell from my somewhat clumsy enthusiasm here that I’ll definitely be recommending it to pretty much anyone I meet who has an interest in either the format of the comic strip or the particular subject matter at hand. Sunstone is seriously a comic book that means a lot to me right now so... yeah... this one is something you should read, for sure.

The Mismade Girl

Miss Maid Of Honour

The Mismade Girl
(Juliette Society Book III)
by Sasha Grey
Cleis Press 
ISBN: 978-1627781824

So here I am with a review of what is, sadly, the final installment of The Juliette Society trilogy by the quite remarkable Sasha Grey. I’m not going to labour the long and awesome history of the author again other than to say, if you’re going to be reading something which, on the surface at least, is manifesting itself as erotic literature then there’s surely nobody more qualified than Ms. Grey to accurately portray that kind of journey. If you want to know more about her history then you could take a look at my reviews for the previous two instalments in the series… The Juliette Society (reviewed here) and The Janus Chamber (reviewed here)… or you could simply google her name although, beware, if you do that you may find that the majority of your search results will more than likely be firmly entrenched in the exciting category of… “not safe for work” (NSFW).

Now, The Mismade Girl is the usual fun and very interesting ride that the first two novels in the series have prepared us for although, if I had to pick a winner, I’d have to say that The Janus Chamber is my favourite of the three due to The Mismade Girl having a fair few less movie references and discussions of cinematic history than the previous two volumes. Fans of these needn’t worry, however, as the central character of Catherine (who I can only assume is a manifestation of the writer in terms of her personality and interests) still maintains an interest in the art of film and reminds the reader, on more than once occasion (the books are written in the first person viewpoint) that the character used to be an aspiring director and film studies student.

Indeed, it’s already only towards the end of the second chapter when she starts talking about John Frankenheimer’s Seconds (reviewed by me here) and a little later goes on to discuss the way certain movie sequels are perceived as being better than the original of a franchise… although, it has to be said, I wouldn't necessarily agree with everything she picks out by way of an example. She also, within the space of just two paragraphs, neatly touches on the current and quite necessary zeitgeist of equal pay for women and the necessity for better lead roles for actresses in the American film industry. So you really have to admire the lady here.

Another great thing which comes up in relation to the horror film genre is the word kenopsia, which I’d never heard before and, sure enough, I couldn’t find it in an English dictionary. But, again, hit a search engine and you’ll find it soon enough and see why this made up word is so appropriate for the analogy Grey is making here. It means, to quote the writer here…

“... the eerie, forlorn atmosphere of a place that's usually bustling with people but is now abandoned and quiet - a school hallway in the evening, an unlit office on a weekend, vacant fairgrounds - an emotional after image that makes it seem not just empty but hyper-empty, with a total population in the negative, who are conspicuously absent… they glow like neon signs."

Isn’t that great?

This is just another of one of the writers more educational moments in a series of books which are full of wonderful and often cunning observations which are revealed in various ways in context to the experiences of the main character and are sprung, ninja-like on an unsuspecting reader in the most enlightening ways possible. For instance, if you want to be a little wiser about just how few big corporations are actually controlling and owning everything you buy, including stuff like that favourite organic or fair trade product you like, then this is the novel to point you in the right direction as to which questions you should be asking.

The story itself is a natural continuation, set a couple of years later, of the events detailed in the previous two volumes, picking up from the threads of the ‘missing presumed dead’ Anna and the certainly very dead Inana Luna, the sexual art siren whose fiery path Catherine was following in her role as a story hungry journalist in the second volume.

This time around we have her involved with a sex tape scandal (based on something which happened in the first novel), a car accident, a sexual paradise compound in a foreign country and, of course, various parties. If there’s one thing Sasha Grey does really well in her writing, bearing in mind she tends to do everything really well when it comes to her obvious intelligence and talents as a wordsmith, it's those party scenes. She somehow manages to write these seemingly throwaway revelry sequences with the ease and camera eye of one of those 1960s movie set pieces… as Catherine wanders around and interacts or observes various little vignettes in her walkthroughs. And, of course, being as this is written in the guise of an erotic novel, a fair few sex parties are on display here too.

Also, her imagination is not a phenomenon limited to her writing and I wonder if thoroughly sinister and attractive scene setters like the following, also come from her apparent skills as a DJ, as much as they do her own experience of such a milieu…

“The music is interesting, and creepy, and it takes me a moment to realise it's The Beatles being played backwards over Wagner, but there's an underlying bass line tying them together into something that curiously works."

Go on, wouldn’t you at least like to be at a party like that at some stage in your life?

I said earlier that The Mismade Girl is the last part of a trilogy and it does seem like it’s got a natural conclusion to all that’s gone before it. Indeed the title itself is a metaphor for a specific type of magic trick, again something I didn’t know myself, which Ms. Grey uses as a metaphor for a process of metamorphosis for her main protagonist that pretty much leaves things with a profound change in the character. I don’t see how the central character can go back to her original state of being after all the hands have been played here. And, as it happens, Catherine’s epilogue, which is directly addressed to the reader, certainly implies a state of conclusion to the trilogy as it stands. That being said, I do think the possibility of a future trilogy continuing things isn’t completely out of the question either but, well… we shall just have to wait and see what the writer does in the future.

One thing's for sure… when people mention Sasha Grey to me nowadays the first thing I think of is…  a brilliant, modern writer. All the glam and erotica, nice as it is, runs it to second place. So there you have it… as with the previous novels in the series, The Mismade Girl is well worth your time if you’re a fan of good, intelligent, observational writing. However, if you’ve not read the others then I would start with those two first.

The Janus Chamber

Hot Hell

The Janus Chamber
by Sasha Grey
Cleis Press  2017
ISBN: 978-1627781800

Okay, so here we have the second novel by ex-porn star turned artist, DJ, composer and writer... the one and only Sasha Grey. I’ve been even more impressed with her as a person after her former life as a notorious sexual warrior, first as an actress with her spectacular performance in Steven Soderbergh’s The Girlfriend Experience (which I reviewed here) and then by her first novel (which, like this one, I’ll still tentatively refer to as an ‘erotic novel’, although that kinda undersells it a little), The Juliette Society, which I reviewed here.

Well, I have to say that, as much as I admired the sheer intelligence and elegance of her attitude and words in The Juliette Society, this sequel called The Janus Chamber really blew me away. I found it way more interesting and addictive than the first one because, while the stylistic nuances in terms of Grey are the same here, as she talks first person through the guise of her central protagonist Catherine, there’s a little more of a story hook to this one... at least, that’s the way it seemed to me.

To be clearer, this one centres around a mystery where Catherine, who has moved on a few years since the last book and who has devoted herself to her politically ambitious boyfriend, discovers a person called Inana Luna, who reminds her of the lost Anna from the previous book. She discovers the depths or... actually... heights to which this person devoted her life in pursuing her sensual limits but her untimely death, concluded a suicide by police, has not convinced Luna’s sister there wasn’t some foul play and so Catherine, who is now pursuing a career as a journalist, pursues the story. She contacts the sister, is given Luna’s diary and even gets to stay in Luna’s old apartment as she goes undercover to work at the hotel which is connected to Luna’s past. From there she gets in good with management and then gains access to the secret, untouchable, extreme sex club in the hotel’s basement and the maze of rooms/chambers full of decadent behaviour and ‘anything goes’ consensual sexuality. And that’s the basic story set up but, as Grey so eloquently puts it here... the story progression in terms of events that happen is not the real thing that people need, so by the time you get to the possibility of an ‘end game’, it’s unimportant... it’s the journey that matters. Closure is not a necessity.

There’s a brilliant chapter on the mystery of hotels near the beginning of the novel which is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the way in which Grey explores each and every subject in life as it comes up. Subjecting all the little elements of the physical and mental environment of the story’s main protagonist to a thorough dissection through some quite searing observations, wielding the scalpel of her ‘gaze made words’ with all the care of a surgeon. And the book is full of these kinds of penetrating looks at the world and the way our society views things which I truly appreciated. There are some great, playful metaphors which constantly take you into little diatribes about various aspects of the world around us... such as the contemplation of a changing room in a lingerie shop being an exploration of the relationship with a priest in a confessional box. Passages like this elevate the novel and lend a lot of substance to what is, at heart, an erotic adventure.

Like the first novel, being as Catherine is now a ‘former’ film student, the writer works her own appreciation of the art of cinema into the text and weaves various movie references throughout. She’s obviously got a thing for the films of Michelangelo Antonioni and, one of my least favourite (actually), L’Avventura, is very much used as a metaphor for the plot line here (indeed, there’s even an establishment in the novel named after another Antonioni movie, La Notte). There’s a lovely analogy, for example, that the missing Anna in L’Avventura is, like Schrodinger’s Cat... in a perpetual state of ‘she’s both on and off the island’, of which I was very appreciative.

The book is full of little nuggets like these within the main text. One minute she’ll be talking about Zulawski’s Possession (reviewed here) and the next she’ll be referencing the plot of Brian De Palma’s Sisters (reviewed here). But these references are, hardly, ever just references to the films themselves. They usually serve a purpose, to drum home an observation about a particular thing... like the uncertainty of picking up on the thread of something and sticking with it to find the reward at the end. One of the passages reads thusly...

“Sometimes the best movie scenes happen after the lights have come on and the credits have scrolled out of sight. When you're shuffling out of the theatre, disoriented because your mind's been shredded from the ride the director's taken you on. Then the screen flickers back to life and there's more, and you rush back inside, desperate to soak in a more complete picture of the message, but you're too late. You miss the key moment that brings realisation full circle to unlock the last puzzle piece of the film.

And sometimes, the superheroes just sit around eating shawarma."

... which not only left me gobsmacked but left me smiling from ear to ear, too. You don’t expect to see the first of the Marvel Avengers movies referenced in an erotic novel. At least, I don’t.

Regarding the erotic content of the tome... well, it seemed to me to be a lot stronger and a little less vanilla than the first one. Whenever the character of Catherine writes about the shining star that was Inana Luna or, indeed, describes the sexual adventures going on around her which she either observes or participates in, I couldn’t help but think of the writer’s knowledge and skill set of her own life being thoroughly mined here. Not that I want to make the obvious mistake of confusing an artist with her work but there’s usually the spirit or soul captured within a writer’s words and... well... put it this way... There are people I would trust to know what they are talking about when it comes to content of a hard erotic nature and some people I wouldn’t. Experience counts for a lot and Sasha Grey is definitely someone I would trust to be writing about this kind of stuff with a certain authenticity and, since she’s turned out to be such an intelligent individual anyway, she’s definitely one of the people I would rely on to deliver more than a kernel of truth about the specific kinds of shenanigans going on in this book, that’s for sure.

And that’s all I have to say about this mini masterpiece other than a) the book leaves you on more of a cliff hanger this time around (this is definitely Sasha Grey’s The Empire Strikes Back when it comes to the dramatic portrayal of her story and the third novel in the trilogy, The Mismade Girl, is due to be published in March 2018) and b) I now have a list of notes on things to find out more about like flower flipping, Pryings by Acconci and the Fantasius Mallare because of this novel. So, yeah, I guess you can say I had a pretty good time with this one. Sasha Grey is turning out to be a most rewarding writer and, if you liked The Juliette Society, the The Janus Chamber is definitely something you are going to want to take a look at.

You can follow Sasha Grey on Twitter here and check out her website here... www.sashagrey.com

Blind Beast (Môjû)

Sting In The Braille

Blind Beast (Môjû)
1969 Japan
Directed by Yasuzô Masumura
Daei/Yumi Region 2

Warning: I need to discuss this film properly... which means including the ending in my discussion. So definite spoilers here.

This is an odd little film which could have been really great if it didn’t stray too far the wrong way into territory that threatens to be controversial but which, instead, just highlights a certain naivety on the part of the writer. It is, however, worth watching because, although it doesn’t really cross over into die hard surrealism in its realisation of its themes, it is kinda interesting and, certainly, draws the viewer into a world which is wholly unique to the film.

It starts off with some quite racy, black and white S&M (as it was known in those days) flavoured still photographs of the central female protagonist Aki, as played by the lovely Mako Midori, which it turns out are part of an art gallery exhibit of shots of her. She is a model and, all through the film, her voice is heard as the narrator. When she goes to visit the gallery showing the controversial shots of her naked with chains and being stimulated by other women, she comes across a blind main exploring her sculptor quite enthusiastically with his hands. As she watches, fascinated, with the way he touches her ersatz naked body, she begins to feel a sexual connection to what he is doing which scares her and she rushes off.

After some time, when she arrives home from a photo shoot, she hires a masseuse and it turns out to be the same blind man who, it transpires, is our central antagonist (and also male protagonist, depending on how the viewer’s perception of him changes over the course of the movie), Michio (as played by Eiji Funakoshi). He chloroforms Aki and kidnaps her, with the help of his mother.

When Aki regains consciousness she is in darkness, for a while,  inside Michio’s giant studio. Giant is literally the word, too, as the landscape consists of walls made from Michio’s sculptors, which is his hobby and life’s work. Various walls and planes are made up of collections of eyes, ears, breasts, arms, legs, noses etc and in the centre, there are two giants sized torsos on their backs, where the characters in this movie spend most of their time.

Michio has kidnapped Aki to sculpt her from touch and will not release her until she co-operates. After trying to escape a few times, she does so and Michio continues his work of making art which is meant to be touched. However, after an escape attempt leaves Michio’s mother dead by his hand, Michio rapes Aki and has sex with her constantly and... here the narrative takes a turn.

After a while she falls in love with him and welcomes his caress.... and the two continue to make love all day and night long as their way of existence. Aki goes blind too, here eyesight atrophied by spending all her time in a darkened studio (actually, the film and set is lit with neutral greens and blues which makes for an interesting viewing experience in itself) and their sexual explorations continue until they both are sated and need more intensity. This continues with explorations of bondage and whips, then small steps into knife and blood play, followed by deep gouges with twisting knife wounds and eventually, to the point here Aki begs Michio to lop off her limbs... all in the name of sensual pleasure and the exploration of the senses. Michio stumbles his way to his tools, gets a big mallet and knife and obliges, before stabbing himself to death.

Now this is actually nothing new, of course, but maybe for late sixties cinema this was entering new territory. While the film, as I said, verges on surrealism... this is only a shallow surface surrealism which can be found in the set design and, possibly, in the fact that the tale is being narrated by somebody who is presumably dead... although the possibility of any spiritual or pseudo-religious ponderings do not seem to be what’s in the mind of the creative team here. There is visual metaphor to see the unseen removal of Aki’s limbs by having the correlating limbs of her sculptured figure drop to the studio floor with a heavy crash with each blow, but this is about as “loose” as reality is allowed to get in the film and, obviously, it comes right at the end. Also, I suspect the Japanese penchant for visual metaphor in their culture, especially cinema, renders the deliberate approach towards a surrealistic viewpoint redundant in the case of this particular movie.

The story of two people getting used to and jaded by the senses to the point when their harder explorations of these senses bring them the ecstasy of death is something I’ve already seen done before and, perhaps I should be angry that the director has irresponsibly assumed that a relationship which comprises, or indeed includes, a BDSM context, is something which two people would allow to keep going past their own limits to the point of serious injury or death. However, while it would be wrong for people to take this film with anything other than a pinch of salt and hopefully a realisation of the damage both to freedom of sexuality and the basic right to consensuality that is a must here, I have to say that this film mostly just comes off as a little naive in response to the areas within which its protagonists are purported to explore.

All that aside, though, it’s a really nicely composed  little movie on a technical level with some stunning camera set-ups, although I really am not sure about the acting. I’ve read that some people have found the performances in this riveting but, honestly, I found them just a little over the top and wide eyed to be honestly convinced that Aki would have such a sea change in attitude half way through. This wasn’t a set of credible performances for me but, that doesn’t really matter because, to be fair, the overall effect of the film is to drag you into the centre of it and not let you out until it’s done. This film has been compared to In The Realm Of The Senses and, although I haven’t seen that particular film, what I have seen of it leads me to believe that this could indeed be a good companion piece for it.

I can’t completely bring myself to recommend to anyone a film which so blatantly portrays the S&M content along such an ignorant and negative path (although the film doesn’t presume to make specific judgements, I am sure the majority of the audience would in response to the lack of specific conclusions) but, if you can get past this element, then on an artistic level the film is, well, not a masterpiece but certainly a visual triumph which any fan of cinema would want to see. Give it a go... if you’re not feeling too jaded.

The Crimson Petal and The White

Allow me to introduce my guest blogger
Sandy Hamilton, returning to this blog after
too long an absence with a real humdinger
of a book review.

Studies of Sugar from the novel, drawn by Sandy Hamilton.


Tickle Me Pink


The Crimson Petal and The White
Michel Faber
Canongate Books 
ISBN: 1847678939

Thank you once again, Nuts4r2, for inviting me onto your blog. I appreciate the opportunity to share my thoughts and feelings about ‘The Crimson Petal and The White’ by Michel Faber.
I came to this novel late, after having watched and enjoyed the television adaptation. Already noted as “The International Bestseller” on the front cover, it came with a bold number of glowing reviews and accolades, spanning five pages no less, within it’s own covers. Likened to Dickens, Byatt, Fowles and Bronte, amongst other canonic giants, it boasted a tip-top pedigree and assured that it would not disappoint. Ever the cynic, I felt fearful of a fall in the face of such confidence but also a little excited, just in case it lived up to its promise.

Although I would love to be different from the crowd by railing against the simpering sycophantic majority and, in my ever so ‘umble opinion, pointing out the error of their ways, I absolutely couldn’t. This book left me wiping the dribble from my chin as my mouth fell open in soppy awe. Apparently, you can judge a book by its cover!

I found The Crimson Petal And The White intriguing right from the first words as the ‘entre nous’ narrative voice speaks directly to the reader with a warning to “watch your step”. I felt that I had been noticed entering this world and my naïve expectations of floating along on a cloud of social niceties were immediately challenged. If I stayed, I felt I was going to be confronted with some unpalatable truths as I would be spending time in a dark and “bitterly cold” place where I would be “led astray”. A hook if I ever saw one, as who doesn’t want to gawp at something we shouldn’t be looking at?

And then, subtly, almost out of awareness, sexual language started priming me for the intimacy to come. It potently saw into my secret hope of having desires satisfied that I was “too shy to name”; it told of my “spent breath”, where the air could be “frigid”.

So with this ‘entrance’, what, exactly, was I to encounter?

As it turns out, a wonderful novel, brilliantly written, about how the political impacts the personal and how the individual fares in social structures created by the few. Faber draws a broad political and social landscape of oppression, sexism, health and mental wellbeing, the warmth and cold of relationships, the reaching or not of potential, the way we enter into the world of the other as rescuer, persecutor or victim – and publishing. He asks the reader to think about great themes, such as the damage caused to all parties by the pressures of social norms, or the impact on those without power of a society without any health or education systems. More subtly, it shows how even those who seemingly hold the power, don’t fare too well unless they know how to survive in their own milieu. Although it lays out serious ideas, the dark journey is lifted by a humour and lightness of touch in the writing that prevents it from sinking into the doldrums.

Faber delicately reveals the psychological and emotional impact of the environment and relationships on individuals and shows how we’re all intertwined. This is all played out when two apparently opposite worlds come together in the relationship between the main protagonists; Sugar, an intelligent prostitute representing the repressed poor and William Rackham, a foolish fop, representing the upper classes. Even as we judge each other, we nonetheless need each other and, like William and Sugar, each can be helped to a fuller potential by the other.

We are first led, by the narrator, to a location “on the wrong side”, a place that we’d rather not see, to which most turn a blind eye, lest they experience unbearable feelings. Faber enables us to stay, look and learn by cradling us in the security blanket of his divine language, which keeps us on the right side of despair. We later see there is no difference between the needs and wants of both sets of people, just in their ‘gets’, which is mostly governed by attitude. Women who have ‘fallen’ from society (as if there’s a place from which to topple), are looked down on from on high, yet men who have “fallen” in the war are looked up to from down low.

As the characters push out from polite society, we can get real, get dirty, just grow up and realize that the inner world of people can be dark and cold, very deep and surprising. This book asks us to delve deeper into the secret, often hidden parts of ourselves required for deeper intimacy that ultimately give us, for better or worse, a more satisfying human connection. It also reminds us that the best art can fulfill this for us, as it touches and awakens parts of ourselves that long for a sublime connection.

Faber does this with his ingenuous methods of revealing the psychological makeup of characters. We hear the cruel, derogatory, internalised parental voice of Mrs Castaway intruding into Sugar’s thoughts, for example, with her ‘oh don’t snivel’ at a time when she is in enormous pain (there was no gynaecological treatment available). A more humorous symbol of the characters’ emotional and mental health is the state of their hair. Sugar’s unmistakable golden-orange hair has a life of it’s own, and William is comically introduced by his hair which, released from under his hat, is jumping around on his head “a flip-flopping crest … like a small furry animal fallen out of the sky onto the head of a man, and determined to keep its purchase there no matter what.” William’s hair is cut shorter and shorter throughout the book as his lot becomes more serious.

Faber gets busy in this book challenging assumptions. We expect that the ‘dark and bitterly cold’ landscape is that of the poor, but actually there is comfort and support in the relationships formed between some of the characters here that does not exist within those in seemingly warmer situations. A warmth that Sugar starts to lose as she moves out of her own, into a new world.

So what makes a cold environment? Not the lack of heating that Emmeline Fox experiences as she lives alone in her house. In fact Mrs Fox is the real sexy vixen of the novel. She’s all woman and, like the cocoa she drinks which “probably” has a “secret ingredient”, underneath her straight-laced piety she’s oozing with sexual tension.

On the subject of sex, Faber does not collude with the pretence that we are coy and unaware. He both faces us at times with the raunchy truth and at others, allows us to be carried away on an ethereal higher plane as his explicit language and descriptions of sex between a prostitute and her customer are contrasted with the devoted, sensual but (almost) unconsummated relationship, between Emmeline and Henry. In our sexually repressed society, this book offers the opportunity to have an adult relationship with sex. I am no prude and found it a relief to discover that I had entered into a world where sexual behaviour, usually coyly termed as “adult” content, is treated in a grown-up way. It’s worrying to me that this subject still elicits sniggers (even on training courses for psychotherapists) and according to one of the reviews on the cover by a contemporary magazine, young women readers need “smelling salts at the ready, girls.” Do they? Why? Why can’t we accept it as the natural organismic (that’s organismic!) aspect of being human?

I found it lovely to see a male depiction of women written with such sensitivity and understanding. I really felt the frustration that Faber shows when female potential can only be reached through a man: his success is her success, his money is her money. If ever there was a challenge to the unthinking view that ‘men don’t understand women’ then look no further than the world of literature where women have been beautifully portrayed by male authors throughout the years. Unfortunately, this in itself tells the bigger story of a lack of women authors, especially in the literary canon. Men are still not being drawn to reading books written by women, and I wonder whether this is an internalised sexism whereby women themselves believe the message of ‘not good enough’. As I write, there is a news headline “women still not in the top jobs”, and, as a woman, I ask, who is really stopping us?

And talking of sensitivity, I must add that Faber constructs stunning sentences, including, I believe, the most perfect sentence I’ve ever read. Just as William hides behind a pseudonym when he secretly visits Sugar, she hides behind a monument commemorating the fallen in the Crimean War when she secretly visits him. Faber brilliantly encapsulates so much within the sentence: “She peeps from behind the plinth, her cheek brushing against the names of young men who are no longer alive, subtle absences in the smoothness of the marble”.

So I leave this review, not with my ‘ever so ‘umble opinion’ but humbled in the presence of such a masterful author who truly has the gift of enhancing the life of his readers. Thank you Michel, if I may, for a poignant and touching encounter. It most certainly lived up to the promise and I’ve had a very exciting ride with you ;-).

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